Groups

[jelfrink]

We are new to Canvas and I'm one of the admins to our district's site.  I see the ability to create groups but I don't know what this actually does. 

Here is what I'd like to do: If teachers create courses, let's say for a sponsored group or a sport, can they add students to that course even if the students aren't tied to any courses that are created through our LDAP integration?  Or, is the process that teachers create the courses (Ex. Wrestling, National Honors Society) and students self-enroll?

Thank you in advance!

[brueckert]

Hi Janna,

We have teachers create courses all the time. We have a "default term" faculty use that doesn't expire for personal archive, sandbox, or team master courses. In your account permissions, the ability to add students to courses is one of the options you can enable or disable for the "teacher" role.

I'm the instructional tech specialist at a private high school of about 650 students. When a teacher needs an additional course for something like sports, college counseling, advisory etc., we are small enough that I usually just do it for them. They provide me with a roster and I bulk add them all at once through the "people" tab in course navigation. This works out well for us, though if you're trying to manage an entire district I don't think we would have the same workflow! If I were in your shoes, I would train teachers in how to create a course and add students, being sure you have a specific term for them to use and that teachers have the ability to add said students turned on in your permissions settings.

Hope this helps!

[jelfrink]

Thanks for the information Brian!

[Chris_Hofer]

Hi  @jelfrink ​...

Take a look at my posting, Paper Pumpkin - Campus Clubs and Groups, which you can find over in the Higher Education​ group (follow that group if you haven't yet).

[jelfrink]

Thanks for sharing the resource!

[Robbie_Grant]

 @jelfrink ,

We are giving the Canvas Admins area a little bit of love (especially questions that are really, really old) and just want to check in with you.  This will also bring this question new attention. 

Were you able to find an answer to your question? I am going to go ahead and mark this question as answered because there hasn't been any more activity in a while so I assume that you have the information that you need. If you still have a question about this or if you have information that you would like to share with the community, by all means, please do come back and leave a comment.  Also, if this question has been answered by one of the previous replies, please feel free to mark that answer as correct.

Robbie